Ekleksographia
to take 2 dimensions, to gather examples stylistically and thematically diverse, at various stages of completion, which remain temptingly tactile — and then! — pull them into the 3rd, and THEN trap them (surely diminished?) behind the flat screen of the reader's computer monitor — but! — to let the losses and the gains, the paradoxes and the parallels be tested in the everywhere nowhereness of the www
(worried what will be further missed, lost and disempowered through this introduction...)
we are given both less and more than the finished work inside Tony Lopez' notebook. Granted a glimpse inside the creative process, the choices, the different emotive reverberations amplified or abbreviated with pen pressure. The slight signifiers of an indecipherable aside, a scrubbed out sentence or a bold, clear passage make the reader's job both more difficult (in terms of legibility) and more simple (intent and emotion are not neutered); we see the important and lyrical gain potency through the refining process and labour evident in more learned skills such as careful refrain and repetition skilfully employed. Our eyes sensitive to the artist's handwriting, we read and re-read the original ideas are preserved and all that is missing, the finished
to move from Lopez' handwritten poems to Geraldine Monk's ominous type and messy cursive bring us still less order and familiarity and introduces a prevalent theme in this collection: blurring shape, size and shade of writing and dispensing with formalities is imperative and more than just a means to an end — to tidy up would be to lose the essence. The staccato rhythm of typed rhyme dark and self-contained at the top left hand corner of one page while other words sprawl loosely. The poet is certain of the grim rhythmic rat-a-tat-tat clenched teeth typed text, yet equally pursuing a softer, more fluid thought
through the layer of the computer monitor, Alan Halsey's imagined sighting of the mythic lipozard is appropriately, cautiously a jungle — not quite knowing on what we tread — witnessing a hunt which begins in Halsey's mind and penetrates reality as the poet layers locations and collages this imaginative scope through a profusion of media, and though this work for me is perhaps the inclusion which loses the most (Willy Wonka's attempt to send Mike Teavee through space using the televisual process — Mike lost the majority of his body mass — Halsey's epic loses its depth, its clarity and its quality) and this idea of the importance of context is one to hold onto when finding a way through this poetic selection wherein texture is so
to poet and curator Tony Trehy's inclusion: photographs of his poetry in situ in various galleries around Europe. Trehy's work placed in an art gallery evokes the cliché "painting pictures with words", only not trying to paint, or sculpt, but to express an idea in the best possible way and test how context affects this. In a public place, yet a place with many rules and invisible protocols, his work is at once reified and distanced from the reader. We are given his works for a short time, pressed to consider and not allowed to touch. Cyberspace spins this again until it is near impossible to read the poems coherently. Trehy is a poet who wants the reader to desist from gulping down words or images with our eyes and this either breaking up of the text and unusual display method is a way
to bring a self-described 'sound artist' into a poetry issue questions the value of emerging boundaries and suggests that commonalities might be more pertinent. Lee Patterson's inclusion, although primarily audio, relies strongly on touch, and breathe — and sounds, usually considered useless or throwaway or a mere by-product, exploring and exposing buried layers of sound. In 'Terrain' he does this democratically (one does not need talent or attendant confidence to play a bottle). He empowers the participant and creates an atmosphere equally of renaissance for the participant inanimate objects, revealing a depth to his source material which might otherwise be easily missed, substratum beauty as well as
Carol Watts' spiral bound journey through suburban purchasing is absolutely unlike Patterson in form and material — but she shares his commitment to the magic of the usually missed. Jewel coloured paper backgrounds frame and exoticise curious receipts and neatly typo-ed words tell adult fairytale excerpts from Watts' 'life', similarly satisfying to the perfect beauties and beasts from childhood, the puzzling life riddles
Can surprise be very slow?
The pared down abstraction of Robert Grenier — similar to (and probably seminal to?) other contributors' loaded simplicity — 4 colour, 4 word evocations self-sabotage translation. The deliberately placed meandering letters, dramatically weird, creeping trails hoping to elicit an original reaction when read. A unique Western response to the haiku — and thus neatly appropriate to Ekleksographia (I love neat appropopriateness!) — Grenier's refined approach is both immediate and lingering, leading the reader slowly to a response with definite conclusions — clear titles, unequivocal words
to put one's finger on quite why Matt Dalby's abstract poems appeal. Perhaps it is because they appear to be not quite one thing or another, perhaps it is because they are closest to the visual art world where I am most easily engaged. The poems are named simply, so 'day' for example, exists as a calligraphic series of close-knit red ink strokes in an artist's pad. Similarly to Patterson's work, this is boldly non-traditional, yet narratives emerge and, as with more traditional poetry, one feels oneself studying a piece, reading the style of a line, the smudge of a fingerprint, a highly subjective story appears. Dalby's work is very beautiful and returns one to the desire to touch which the internet opposes, or at the very least
a communication method which is absolutely modern and absolutely intangible — in the most basic sense a dead (not a-live) medium — a rare sense of the eternal breathes weird life into Darren Marsh's "visual sonnet". If I play Marsh's piece on my computer on one web page, and open another page simultaneously, and then go back to it, Marsh's work has moved on without me, and unlike the overwhelming amount of 'stuff' online, the progress of the piece is beyond my control. Although Marsh's work does not have the same hand strength of other examples, it does more than any of the others to wrestle an individual's
control back from the monster. Colours and words compete for our attention but the text is used in the same way as the stroke from a paintbrush might be. Words appear largely abstract but their placement on the page, their appearance, disappearance or interwoven quality is
the internet of the handwritten. The seemingly limitless font options are shown as sham by the luddite luminosity of the elegant and the personal, the indecipherable and the individual. Looking at these handwrittens one becomes aware of the revealing, intimate relationship between the hand and the eye. If I try to grasp a thought, and, while attempting to write on my page I am distracted by another strand of thought, I look up, away from the hand, stare out the window, blink, and my pen slips, my first thought lapsed and accidentally I've caught on the page my thought process, my attention span, the moment that awake, I slip into dream